Atmosphère — Restaurant in Bonneville

Truly Awful Experience

I was so looking forward to this evening. The reviews were fantastic, it was our last night in Chamonix, and my email request for a reservation was promptly answered. That, unfortunately, is where this happy story ended. L’Atmosphere offers white table cloths and pricy menu options, but the suggestion that this is a top restaurant in Chamonix is an insult to the many quality restaurants we found here.

No offer to check our winter coats—a fact we didn’t notice until we saw subsequent customers offered this service. This, however, was only a sign of things to come.

Our table was provided three menus for our party of six. Even though the restaurant was not busy at that hour, it was an effort to find someone to provide us a menu and “allow” us to place our first drink order. Interestingly, before we were even halfway finished with our 14€/glass champagne, or before we had made our meal selections, we were pushed to place our wine order.

We ordered two servings from the children’s menu. One—the fish—was nicely prepared. The other—the chicken—was undercooked. As our daughter described, it was “gooey.” We returned it to the kitchen. Rather than start fresh, they simply put the chicken back on the grill for a few minutes before bringing it back to our table still undercooked. Fortunately, a French member of our party was able to get the restaurant to agree to remove this portion from our bill. Sadly, when the bill arrived, this item had not been deducted. Again, we had to get up from our table to discuss this with the staff, who were rude, dismissive, and unapologetic.

My husband ordered the Beef Rossini with foie gras. When he ordered, the waitress confirmed the dish would be served with Potato Grata Dophinoise. He was very pleased because he loves this type of potato. When the dish was served, it was brought out with roasted potatoes. He quickly pointed out this error, but the server—different from the one who took the order—told us the dish is served with roasted potatoes. After making it seem the mistake was his, it was finally agreed that they would bring the potatoes originally ordered. He waited and waited, nibbling on the beef, trying to save some until the potatoes arrived. They did finally arrive 25 minutes later as he took my last bite of meat. No apologies or explanation. When he got up to bring this to the attention of the hostess/manager, she was equally unapologetic, again making it seem as if the error was his.

Yes, we saw this same hostess with dark hair and glasses laughing behind our backs as we left. Sadly that was appropriate because indeed it was a joke that we shelled out +350€ for food that was anything but special and service that was as bad as any...

After leaving the restaurant we originally booked, we walked past Atmosphere and decided to try our luck.

For some reasons after being denied to order an lobster, I really wanted lobster tonight and Atmosphere has a tank with live lobsters in it.

I decided to only order the lobster as my main as it was quite pricy and I wasn’t too hungry. My partner order the traditional menu.

The waiter showed me the live lobster and it was cooked perfectly, not covered in cream/cheese, just a la pancha with garlic, chive and lightly charred, the meat was fresh and succulent and the small potatoes with spring onion that came with it can be used to soak up the juice from the lobster meat.

My partner’s starter was an savoury tart with strips of mushroom, bacon, vegetable and blueberry served with fresh salad green. I had a sample of it and it was a nice savoury starter.

For the main he had the low temperature cooked cod, it was a substantial piece of fish, still juicy and light.

For dessert I had the trio of sorbet (mango, strawberry and lemon) topped with a miniature meringue and a well baked madeleine. It was a nice sweet ending to the dinner, I liked sorbet as it had no cream nor cheese, perfect for lactose...

We have just had dinner at Atmosphere, and we have ordered Pierre Chaud, unfortunately it wasn’t a stone but a thin metallic plate and it didn’t keep the heat, so the beef was not really cooking, it stayed pink after 15 minutes. We sent most of it back. My husband said that his venison was also the worst venison he ever had, it was grainy, but since he finished it, he didn’t complain. The desserts were the only good thing, they were tasty. When it came to the bill, we spoke to numerous waiters but they refused to take half of the Pierre Chaud off (you order it for two, and I literally had one piece, my daughter had more as she was hungry, but didn’t like it as it was boiled). We did send most of it back. I am now gutted I didn’t take a picture of pink beef slowly boiling on the luke warm metallic plate. The waiters were not accommodating and made us pay for the whole thing. So the argument was over 36 euro on 260 euro bill. They do not care for their customers as they are so central and busy every night. We will definitely never be back and will warn...